Memo To: Vice President Dick Cheney
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: A Very Important Fellow You Should Meet

You have known me long enough, Mr. Vice President, to know that I collect
interesting people who are generally unknowns, but who deserve to be known.
Remember Art Laffer and Bob Mundell? Anyway, I have discovered a very
interesting man, Steve Pelletiere, who happens to be retired after a long and
rich career with the CIA and then the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. He's
70 years old and as I discovered when he came to visit me last month, a tall
stringbean of a fellow, who knows more about oil than I will ever know, but
who wanted me to teach him about the gold/oil nexus. Imagine that, 70 and
still eager to learn. His Ph.D. is in Political Science and after a stint in
journalism, covering the Middle East, he became the CIA's senior analyst at
Langley during the Iran/Iraq war. At the Army War College, he and others
studied Iraq's victory over Iran in minute detail, and he has written a number
of books on how that feat was managed, with Iraq outnumbered 3-to-1 by the
Iranians. If I were you, Mr. VP, I would invite him to kick things around with
your staff, to give you the kind of overview you could never get by reaching
out randomly to folks at the Pentagon or State.

To whet your appetite, here is a report of a talk he gave to the Center for
Policy Analysis on Palestine CPAP), September 13, 2001. That is, two days
after 9-11. He is a pretty good predictor, you will see, which is why I think
you should ask him to bring in his crystal ball and tell you what will happen
if we bring down Saddam by force, without the UN behind us. There are few
people in the world with your experience, Mr. VP, but I think you know there
are still a few things you do not know.

* * * * *

“The Role of the Media in Shaping Public Perception.”
Report from a CPAP briefing by Stephen Pelletiere

With a PhD in Political Science, a background in journalism, and a
current position as professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Army
War College, Stephen Pelletiere brought his expertise to a discussion of the
media at a 13 September 2001 Center lecture. He focused on press coverage of
Iraq, Palestine, and the current situation following the 11 September plane
hijackings and attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the U.S.

Pelletiere began by addressing the media campaign against Iraq following the
Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. did not expect Iraq to win, and when it did, U.S.
leaders were “dumbfounded.” As Iraq sought to “rebuild itself” after
the war, the U.S. attempted to prevent this restructuring through a number of
avenues, focusing on damaging Iraq’s “credit worthiness.” Despite the
accumulation of a large debt, Iraq “was good for the money” considering
its oil resources. Still, in the spring of 1988, Iraq did not have the cash
reserves necessary and wished to reschedule its debt payments. The media in
the U.S. began running stories on Iraq, “the tone of which was extremely
hostile.”

“All of the stories were slanted against Iraq,” which by itself is
suspicious. In addition, some of the stories were simply “phony,” such as
the report that 80,000 to 100,000 Kurds were gassed to death by Iraq. “You
can’t kill that many people using gas, in a concentrated period, in terrain
such as exists in northern Iraq.” Irrational stories do appear in the media
on occasion, but not usually so extensively in the established press. It
seemed to Pelletiere that “this was a campaign.” At the time, Congress was
debating sanctions on Iraq and may have been trying to prepare the public.
When sanctions were eventually declared, Iraq could no longer reschedule its
debts.

Moving to the issue of how the media has covered Israel and Palestine,
Pelletiere explained that Israel’s current military activity in the Occupied
Territories is “coming dangerously close to ethnic cleansing.”
Nonetheless, the press presents the conflict as relatively balanced and argues
that both sides are equally responsible for the violence. Pelletiere takes a
different approach. He explained that at the Camp David negotiations,
then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered a deal “that was no deal at
all.” Barak hoped the Palestinians would accept it and be “saddled with an
entity that was not viable,” a so-called state that would fall apart.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat refused. “The pro-Israeli forces … had to
find a way of retreating from the exposed position they found themselves in,
because in the process of setting Arafat up, … they had dignified both him
and his movement by appearing to take the idea of Palestinian statehood
seriously.” They choose to “criminalize” the Palestinians. Israeli
leader Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the Haram al-Sharif, which Barak
allowed, started the uprising, then the Israeli army responded to subsequent
protests with “unusual ferocity.” “Once a cycle of violence had been
created, one could simply nurse it along.”

Pelletiere urged the public to “pay special attention” to the fact that
journalists who are focusing on these stories and opinions are conservative,
as are the newspapers publishing them, mainly The New York Times, The
Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. The line between news and
opinion has become blurred, mainly through the op-ed pages of the newspapers.
“Spurious” ideas start there and then filter into the news. This is not
only the case regarding Israel/Palestine, but with other issues as well. The
role of the press is to “serve special interests.” Pelletiere urged those
concerned with these issues to confront to media. The “peace movement faced
the same challenges” in the 1960s and managed to overcome them. They can be
overcome now as well, “but it does take innovative thinking.”

“There is a cadre [in the government] that knows what’s going on” and
who are “fairly astute,” but if their opinions are heard at all, they are
labeled “alternative.” During his work with the army and Central
Intelligence Agency, Pelletiere met those like him who had alternative
viewpoints but “never got a hearing until there was a crisis,” such as
during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Despite his encouragement of innovative thinking, Pelletiere was keenly aware
of the challenges involved. As he explained, conservatives are “in the
ascendancy” now. He already sees trends developing following Tuesday’s
attack. These trends include the perceptions that: (1) “We’re at war.”
(2) America will never again be the same. However, Pelletiere asserted, “I
don’t think we’re any different” than before. The U.S. is still nearing
a recession, the information technology industry is still failing, President
Bush is still untested. (3) Osama bin Laden is guilty of the attack.
Pelletiere does not believe bin Laden had the resources to organize such a
campaign, but whether or not he is guilty, the U.S. will use him as a
scapegoat. (4) The United States will likely attack Afghanistan. The
administration is already preparing the public for it through news coverage
and government briefings.

This is “not a classic conspiracy,” Pelletiere pointed out. Government and
media leaders do not get together and decide what these “lines” or trends
will be. Rather, there is a “distillation process” from “thinks tanks”
and policy institutes. Certain approaches seem more plausible than others, are
repeated often enough, and are easier to defend than other arguments, and they
become the “line.” Pelletiere also urged the audience to watch the stock
market and observe how it affects U.S. policies. The only times he has
witnessed “real changes made” were when business interests were affected.

As for what the U.S. leadership will do now, Pelletiere said, “All they want
to do is get themselves through this period. If it develops into a real
exploitation where the administration begins to single out certain areas for
repression—then we’re in for a very bad period. I don’t see any signs of
that now.” Nonetheless, “there’s a tradition of using incidents like
this … to point American society into a very conservative direction.” This
has occurred “over and over again” in the past. “Whether that will
happen this time, I don’t think anyone has a way of knowing, but it’s a
possibility.”

* * * * *

The above text is based on remarks delivered on 13 September
2001 by Stephen Pelletiere, Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S.
Army War College. His presentation was based on his book Iraq and the
International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Gulf (Praeger: 2001).
His views do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Policy Analysis
on Palestine or The Jerusalem Fund. This “For the Record” was written by
Publications Manager Wendy Lehman; it may be used without permission but with
proper attribution to the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine.

This information first appeared in For the Record No. 82, 18 September 2001.